Aria drifted numbly through the flume. It took a while before she could even start to think straight again. After pushing Saint Dane into the pit she'd gone from thinking she was about to die instantly, to realizing she was going to live, to realizing that she was probably about to die painfully. Her curiosity had once again gotten the better of her, and she'd managed to irk the shapeshifter just like she had on the mountain when she'd first arrived on Denduron.

After several minutes of intense contemplation of his abrupt and violent changes in mood, she came to the conclusion that he was just crazy, and that she would need to be more careful around him in the future. Not that there was going to be a future with him in it, hopefully.

She wondered if Jani would still be there when she got back, and how long she'd been gone at all so far. Two consecutive flume trips were a bit disorienting. Time passed very strangely in the things, and it seemed like her own thoughts were the only way she had of marking how long she'd been in them. She didn't have a stopwatch, and there weren't exactly any landmarks she could pick out.

Or were there? There did seem to be a starfield outside. Maybe if she traveled the flumes enough she would start to recognize constellations. Like there was any chance of that happening. As far as she was concerned, the next flume trip she took was going to be her last – the express from Denduron to First Earth.

She was still trembling slightly, and this time it wasn't from cold, or even from the pain radiating from her side. That guy did a number on her every time he showed up. It was the eyes. She'd never imagined a gaze could be so potent, so arresting. It was as indominable as an undertow. Once it caught hold of you, it was almost impossible to get out of.

She sighed and rubbed her arm. He'd been about to carve into her, she was sure, but then he'd just…stopped. She still had no idea why. Then they'd landed in that hot, humid cavern and he'd dropped her. Then, even more strangely, he'd done a complete one-eighty and taken pity on her constricted vocal chords by sending her back to Denduron.

Beyond strange. But, hey, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The musical notes around her started to chime faster, which by now she knew signaled the end of a trip through the flume. That's when a hint of panic kicked in. This flume was at the bottom on the mineshaft, and so far it seemed like she always appeared right at the tunnel's entrance. Since the tunnel was a giant pit that went straight down, would she end up at the entrance and just fall right back in?

She hoped not. Though she supposed if she did she could just call out 'First Earth' and hope it took her home. There was certainly no way she was yelling 'Eelong,' given what was waiting for her on the other side. She didn't think Saint Dane would be happy if she boomeranged right back to him after he'd been gracious enough to send her off.

Well, no time to think about it now. She tensed up, closed her eyes, waited for the strange tunnel to deposit her…

…and with a flash of light and sound, she found herself standing on solid ground.

And freezing.

She opened her eyes and her mouth dropped open. She wasn't in the flume in the mineshaft – this was the flume on the mountain. And to top that off, she wasn't alone. Tarek, Jani, and Uncle Press were all standing in front of her, mirroring her surprise.

She was completely confused. That wasn't possible. The trip to the mountain flume would have taken hours. She'd been gone minutes. How in the world were they here?

Almost at once, her uncle's face broke into a wild grin. "Aria! I was wondering what happened to you." He covered the distance between them in a couple of long strides and wrapped her up in a huge hug.

Jani was completely befuddled. "B…but you fell! Into the mineshaft! How are you alive? How are you here?"

Aria looked back and forth between them, utterly failed to come up with an adequate response, and just shrugged hopelessly.

Press laughed. "Well, at least now Jani will believe us about the flumes. She's been having trouble wrapping her head around that one."

Jani didn't even have the mental and emotional wherewithal to say anything. She was still just shell-shocked. Aria was still kind of in the same boat. "Um. How did I get here? And…how long have I been gone?"

Finally, Press stepped back and surveyed her with some concern. "Well, flume travel is a little complicated," he said carefully. "Why don't you start by telling us what happened to you?"

She frowned. "There's really not a lot to tell. I pushed Saint Dane into the mineshaft. We fell for a pretty long way, which I thought was odd since I figured we should have hit the bottom pretty quickly. Then he yelled Eelo–"

Press waved his hands in a frantic 'no' gesture, and Aria cut off abruptly. Right. She was still standing next to the flume, and she really didn't want to flume herself away by mistake. She continued, "Well, uh, he yelled out the name of a different territory, and that's when I realized it was a flume."

Press nodded. "Yeah, I think I know which territory he took you to. Hot? Humid? Jungley?"

Aria replied, "Well, hot and humid, definitely. I didn't exactly spend enough time there to see anything else."

Press' nodded again, then frowned in disconcertion. "Right. So, let me get this straight. You actually got stuck in the flume with Saint Dane?"

She shuddered. "Yeah. He…wasn't happy about it. I tried asking him a few questions, and he flipped out on me."

Press' eyes widened and he took a step forward to start looking her over. "Damn. He usually just talks the first few times. Did he hurt you? Are you okay?"

He quickly found the wound on her side – the blood hadn't even dried yet – and Aria saw something briefly flash in her uncle's eyes that she could only remember seeing a few times in her life – real anger.

Wanting to calm him down, she put a hand up and said, "Uh, it's okay, that's the cut from a few days ago. It just reopened when I fell–"

She was cut off as Jani snapped, "Yeah, when he grabbed onto your arm and just about ripped you off the ledge! Why didn't you let go of him? And he's the one who gave you that in the first place, too!"

Press glanced over with a really peculiar look as Jani was talking. He opened his mouth like he wanted to address something she'd said, but then snapped it closed and looked back at Aria. "Okay, well, first things first. Are you okay? Do you need medical help right away?"

She shook her head. It really wasn't bad enough to constitute an emergency. "No, I'm okay. It's not that bad, it just hurts. It was nearly healed anyways."

The truth was it really hurt and she wanted to get it treated as soon as possible, but she also wanted to know how she ended up here. Press did too, apparently, so he said, "Okay then. You and Saint Dane fell into the flume and he lost his temper. What happened then?"

She cringed as she recalled that last interaction. "Uh, well, he grabbed me and at first I thought he was going to start carving me like a pumpkin. But then we landed on the territory and he just glared at me and let me go. I tried to say Dend…er, the name of this territory, but my tongue just totally tied up." There seemed to be two flumes on this territory, and she didn't want to find out if saying the name of it while she was in one flume would take her to the other one. "I guess he got tired of my stuttering, because he waited a minute, said the name of the territory, stepped back, and let the flume bring me back here."

Press' eyebrows shot up. "He sent you back here? Just like that? Did he say anything else?"

"No, nothing."

He looked thoughtful. "Well, I guess we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"Yeah, that's what I said." She'd picked up a lot of habits and catchphrases from her uncle.

His mouth twitched like he might smile, but he still looked like he was thinking hard about something. Now, however, it was his turn for some explanations. "So, how did I end up here?" She prompted him. "Now? I mean, I was down there just a few minutes ago. Now I'm up here, and there's no way you guys made it up here while I was gone. Unless you can use the flume for that."

"No," he replied. "We hiked it. You can't really use one flume on a territory to travel to another flume on the same territory."

"So how did you get up here so quickly?"

Jani had been growing steadily more agitated, and now butted in. "We didn't! You've been gone for two days! We thought you were dead!"

What? Two days? That wasn't possible. And they'd thought she was dead? "…Really?"

Press looked serious for a moment. "I have to admit…I was pretty worried. It honestly didn't occur to me that the mineshaft might have been a flume."

Her heart fell. Oh, man. He must have felt awful. He'd brought her here, after all, then been forced to leave her alone to handle everything by herself. Then he'd left her alone again for ten minutes, and…

She shook the thought off and asked, "What happened?"

It was at this point that Tarek stepped forward. She couldn't quite read his expression, but to her relief it didn't seem like he was angry. He said, "Press took me aside to talk to me about choosing an acolyte. Jani. I'd just decided to do so when she came bursting into the cavern. She was white as snow, and told us what happened. Is it true? Did you really tackle Saint Dane into the mineshaft to save her?"

She blushed. The way he said it, it made her sound like a hero. She'd never dealt with praise well, so she mumbled, "No. I mean, yeah? I mean…um…kind of?"

His face twisted up in confusion, but Jani said, "Yeah, that is what happened and you know it! I made Saint Dane drop me, then you shoved him over the railing!"

Aria tugged at her collar, cleared her throat, and tried to move the conversation forward. She did not like the spotlight. "So, what happened then?"

Press took over from there. "Well, we followed her back, but of course you two were gone. I was kind of taken off-guard by the whole thing. I was so distracted that I didn't even notice my ring glowing."

What? His Traveler ring? "Why would your ring be glowing?"

He held his hand up and, to Aria's surprise, she saw the grey stone in his ring had turned partly crystalline and was, sure enough, glowing. "A Traveler's ring glows when it gets close to a flume. Pretty useful, since they're usually so well hidden."

She pulled her own ring out of her shirt. Sure enough, it was glowing. "Oh. Okay, cool. So, what then? Wait…" she said as she realized something. "Did I…I didn't miss Alder's funeral?"

Press winced and Tarek looked away. "Yeah," her uncle said apologetically. "Sorry."

She was utterly dismayed. He'd died protecting her, and she'd missed his funeral.

Her fist clenched in impotent frustration. "How? How was I gone for two days? How am I here now? What is up with these…stupid flume things?"

She turned around and kicked the floor of the flume. She was so done with this stuff.

Press sighed and said, "Well, like I said, flumes are a little complicated. They aren't really connected linearly, hence how you went in one flume but came out of another, even though it seemed like it should have been the exact same trip in reverse. And they don't just travel through space, they also travel through time. They land you where you need to be, when you need to be there."

Where she needed to be, when she needed to be there. Great. "Okay, well, who decides that? Or what? How do I know where and when I'll end up when I use these things?"

Press shook his head. "You don't. You just have to trust that you'll end up in the right place, at the right time."

She scowled. "Okay, well, here's what I think of whatever 'forces that be' that decided I needed to miss Alder's funeral!" She directed an obscene hand gesture to the roof of the cave.

Press winced again. "Yeah, I get you. This stuff can be pretty frustrating sometimes."

She turned around and actually stomped the ground in anger. "I don't care. I only need to use this thing one more time. I'm going home."

She was sore, she was tired, she was seriously upset about missing Alder's funeral, and she was in a lot of pain. She didn't want to hear about what was 'meant to be,' she didn't want to worry about cosmic highways, she didn't care about time travel. She wanted to go home, get her wound treated properly, take a hot shower, give her family a hug, eat some nice, real, fake food, curl up in her bed and fall asleep with her cat.

Press opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Tarek stepped forward. "Good. You should."

She looked at him, worried that he was about to tell her once again that she was a coward, and not cut out for the Traveler lifestyle, and that home was really the only sensible place for her.

But there was no antagonism or contempt in his tone. He said, "You came here with no preparation and no explanation, and unlike me, you didn't have a mentor to guide you through it all. Despite that, you did far more than I to save this territory. You found the lab. You convinced Kahlin and Steric to share their discovery before war could break out, and you came up with a plan that would allow them to do so without losing all they had worked for. You faced an army to make peace happen. All I did was run around and play the part of a messenger."

That wasn't fair. Aria tried to intervene. "That's not true. You saved me from Jani, you saved Jani from those assassins–"

But he wasn't having it. "Denduron is safe thanks to you." he continued, "You have done more than enough. I think you have earned the right to go home." He lowered his head and frowned. Then he looked up and said, "I'm sorry that I called you a coward. You're as brave as anyone I've ever met. Thank you for all you've done here."

Her throat closed up. She'd felt like she'd been on the brink of tears for the last ten minutes from the pain of her injury, the distress, the confusion, the exhaustion, but Tarek's words were what broke the barrier. Her eyes stung at the sheen of salt, and she blinked a few times to clear them.

At once Tarek went from somber to freaked. "Ah, no! Wait, don't cry!"

But she just bit her lip and smiled. It looked like Tarek didn't hate her anymore. She stepped forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, and hugged him. He tensed in surprise, but quickly returned the hug, being careful not to agitate her side. She said, "I couldn't have done it without you."

She let go and turned to Jani. "You, either. Seriously. You were amazing, Jani." She stepped forward to give her a hug, but recalled what had happened the last time she'd tried that, so at the last minute she just reached a hand around and gave her a firm pat on the back.

Jani grunted, "Ugh. Yeah. Thanks. You too, I guess." And she patted her back.

She smiled at them, tears mostly under control, then turned to Press with a pleading look. "So, home? Please?"

She caught what looked like pride on his features as he watched the three of them. Aria thought she saw something else in his eyes, something darker, but it was gone before she could really figure it out. "Yeah, kid. Let's get dressed and go home." He was standing beside Aria's stuff, which was still in the same place she'd left it. He picked it up and tossed it to her.

Aria caught it, glad to have her own things back again. Then she looked down at her clothes and over at Jani and Tarek. Jani just frowned, but Tarek said, "Oh, right. You need to change back." He turned his back to them and leaned over to talk to Jani, probably to explain the whole blending-in thing.

Backs all turned, she quickly stripped off her leathers, hastily folded them, set them aside, and pulled on her own clothes. She risked a look at her injury and was relieved to see it felt a lot worse than it looked. It wouldn't take long to fix it up again.

When she was clothed she checked to make sure her uncle was decent, then said, "Alright. Well, I guess this is goodbye."

Jani and Tarek turned around, looked at her, and got the weirdest expressions on their faces. Tarek just tilted his head to the side, while Jani burst out laughing. "Is that what people wear where you come from? You look ridiculous!"

She frowned and looked down at her clothes. Jeans, a tee-shirt, and a light blue jacket. And her blue and grey fanny pack. And her shoes. Okay, the shoes were a bit odd – blue and purple sneakers – and her jeans were…bellbottoms…but overall she thought she looked fine.

Uncle Press just grinned at Tarek and Jani. "Yeah, that's a pretty usual reaction."

They both nodded back at him, Jani still snickering at their alien getup. Tarek said, "Until next time. Fare well."

Jani said, "Yeah, and if you get the chance, kick Saint Dane down another mineshaft for me. And make sure it's a real one next time!"

Aria smiled weakly, then looked between Uncle Press and the flume questioningly. He raised an eyebrow and nodded.

Finally! "First Earth," she called clearly into the flume.

It sprang to life before them. She turned back and waved goodbye to her new friends before she was swept away. They waved her goodbye, and within moments she was on her way back home.

Beside her, Press leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. "Ahh. Gotta say, as rough as this lifestyle is, I always love a trip in the flume. What do you think of them?"

"Eh," she relied, unenthused. She was floating functionally beside him, trying not to flip over or turn upside down.

"Eh?" He replied incredulously. "Ah, come on! These things are cool. No gravity, awesome special effects, their own soundtrack. I thought you'd love them!"

Her eyes traveled around the giant, crystalline wormhole. "I dunno. I guess they still freak me out a little." And they did. The walls were craggy and looked unforgiving, and it seemed to her that they were traveling fast. What if there was some sort of…flume fluke? What if she hit the wall? What if there was a hole in the flume? It looked like empty space out there. What if she fell through? What if something even worse happened?

Yeah. Relaxing as it was, she wasn't a flume fan.

Press shrugged. "Ah, well. I guess they're not for everyone…though you're the first person I've ever met who didn't like them. Say, mind if I ask you a question?"

She pulled her eyes from the walls and said, "Yeah? What's up?"

"What did Jani mean when she said you wouldn't let go of Saint Dane?"

Her stomach dropped. She'd tried to put that out of her mind, and had ignored it when Jani had brought it up, because she was worried what her uncle would think of her. After all, he and Saint Dane were enemies. She had no reason to have tried to help him. And she hadn't tried, not really, not consciously.

She attempted to slide the question. "Um. Well, I mean, things were moving pretty fast. I guess I just panicked. It was nothing."

He gave her a questioning look. Not upset, not critical, just curious. "But what happened?"

She went back to watching the stars fly by outside the flume. "Well, I tackled him over the edge, but I got ahold of the rail before I fell. I also happened to, I dunno, kind of…grab Saint Dane?"

He didn't say anything, and she tried to explain. "I mean, he grabbed onto me too, so it would have been hard to shake him off, but either way I just couldn't…I mean, I couldn't really let go. I mean, it was a mineshaft. I couldn't just drop him down a mineshaft."

She couldn't interpret his tone as he asked, "Didn't he attack and terrorize you multiple times over the last few days?"

She felt a crawling sensation of shame. This was what she'd been worried about. "Yes," she replied meekly.

"But you still tried to help him?"

Her voice became even quieter. "Yeah."

"I see."

She kept staring pointedly in another direction. She went over all the things Saint Dane had done and said and tried to accomplish over the last week. In spite of all of it, she'd been unable to drop him. Was there something wrong with her?

Her uncle was silent for a very long moment. Then he said, "Compassion isn't anything to be ashamed of, Aria. The fact that you were willing to show him mercy, even after everything he'd done, doesn't mean you're weak."

She looked at him, eyes wide. Her face felt warm. "But…he tried to kill me. He tried to kill Jani. He tried to start a war that would have killed tons of people. He did kill Grail. He didn't deserve mercy. He didn't deserve anything! Did he?" She asked desperately.

Press looked at her very seriously, and she felt horribly confused. But he just said, "Aria, some people take themselves beyond the point of forgiveness. They do things, say things, that go past simple cruelty and into the realm of real evil. It's easy to look at people like that – like him – and assume that there is absolutely nothing there worth salvaging."

She hung her head. There was something wrong with her.

Then he said, "It's a very, very rare person who can look at someone like that with clear eyes and see a spark of decency, or some tiny shred of potential. To see something worth saving. I doubt you'll ever meet anyone else like that as long as you live, but that doesn't mean you're wrong. It doesn't mean you're crazy. And it doesn't mean you're weak."

She looked at him helplessly as the notes of the flume sped up around them. "Then what does it mean?"

He gave her an odd half-smile and shrugged. "I don't know. You'll have to figure that out for yourself."

With a flash of light, they were home.

She could feel it at once, the familiarity. Maybe it was the air. Maybe it was the stone around her. Heck, maybe the force of gravity on Denduron was 9.73 meters per second squared and she was distinctly feeling Earth's own lovely 9.81. Whatever it was, she was home.

Immediately, she ducked behind her uncle and said, "Oh, I forgot to ask you…how'd you get past the quigs?"

He laughed. "Trade secret. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure they'll be gone by now. The quigs show up to guard the flumes on whatever territory Saint Dane is working on. Now that he's on another one, the quigs here on Earth should be gone. They were on Denduron, anyways."

"Wait, really? The giant bears were gone?"

"Yup," he said jovially. "Not a hair left."

She let out a breath of relief. "Awesome. Because, honestly, I really don't think I could outrun a mountain lion right now."

He grinned, but then looked down at her with a worried expression. The wound on her side had stopped bleeding, but honestly the pain was a lot more tiring than the blood loss. He took her arm and said, "Yikes. Sorry, let's get you some help. Will you be okay to ride, or should I call for an Uber? Or an ambulance?"

Cripes, that sentence sounded weird after spending a week in Lord of the Rings. "I'll be fine to ride. And I'd rather not go to the ER if possible. It's not that serious."

He nodded, and together they made their way back out of the cave. Sure enough, no quigs.

She just about moaned when she finally caught sight of the sky again. "One sun. We really are home."

His answering smile was a bit crooked, and once again Aria got the sense that there was something he wasn't addressing. Whatever it was, it was really starting to give her the chills.

They stomped through the undergrowth back to the trail, and Aria enjoyed the short hike back to the parking lot. It was nice to be somewhere familiar again.

Then something occurred to her and she yelped, "Oh, man, how long have we been gone? Time doesn't pass linearly, right?" She could manage having been gone for…what, five days? But she'd spent twenty minutes in the flume and two days had passed on Denduron when she'd gotten back. She really didn't want to find out that she'd been missing for, like, half a year or something.

To answer that Uncle Press strode over the gravel as they got to the parking lot, reached into the pack on the back where he kept all his extra stuff, and pulled out his phone. He clicked it on, looked for a moment, then said, "Looks like time passed linearly. It doesn't always, but it did this time. See?"

He held the phone out and, sure enough, it was…Sunday. Sunday the week after she'd left. Where had the other two days gone?

Oh, right. Her brief trip to Eelong. Well, that wasn't too bad, but still…

"I missed a week of school," she groaned. "I had a paper due. And a quiz. And I have a midterm tomorrow. Gah!"

Press didn't commiserate. "Don't worry, your school will understand. Now, let's go. Would you mind if we dropped by Kar's place to get your injury taken care of?"

That seemed odd, since he knew that they had an awesome first kit at her house. "Uh, I'd really like to see mom and dad. I mean, Kar too, but maybe we could do that afterwards?"

He shook his head. "I'd rather we stopped by Kar's place first. Stick with me a little longer?"

He looked like he needed her to do this for him, whatever the reason may have been. She really, really wanted to get home, but…

"Okay," she sighed, and there was a fair hint of resentment in her voice. "We can drop by. But then home."

"Yup. Promise."

Despite the warmth of the sun on her hair, she was starting to feel oddly cold. She hopped behind Uncle Press as he mounted his bike, and in moments the two were racing back down the road back to Lumis.